Golf Fairway Maintenance: Interactive Monthly Workload Planner

This maintenance planner provides the greenkeeper / course manager with a detailed planning tool for estimating the monthly work required to maintain the grassed fairways to a defined standard, for example using Performance Quality Standards, for a full year.

For those who just want a quick estimate of the total yearly workload they should refer to the Annual Interactive Workload Estimator, which is much quicker to complete but does not provide the detail given here.

Changes to inputs can be easily undertaken to see the impact this will have on the hours for maintaining the fairways. This is ideal for 'what if' scenarios and is particularly useful if the maintenance programme is to be adjusted to allow for increased mowing frequency, or other tasks, to vary the level of quality that is expected from the fairways.

Different machine types and speeds can produce significantly varying times, for example, deep spiking times will vary significantly depending upon the amount of soil shattering required and the depth of penetration.

The experience of a head greenkeeper / course manager will be invaluable in helping to determine the maintenance input required, as this person will be the one who has the local knowledge on the existing soil conditions and the effect this has on maintenance tasks.

The estimated time, which will vary depending upon the size of the course, to complete an operation is included in column 2, 'Hours', however, this can be simply overwritten to put your own figures in if this is required.

Notes for completion of the interactive planner

1. If you put your own hourly cost into the box on the first row, then the planner will calculate the total costs for your situation.
2. The values that can be entered into column 2, 'Hours' are restricted to 5 characters (e.g. 10.33, or 1.755).
3. The values that can be entered into the monthly frequency columns are restricted to 3 characters.
4. All the other boxes, that are totals, will be calculated automatically once the [Calculate] button is pressed.
5. Do not add a leading zero, i.e. 0, to any whole numbers, i.e. 5 should not be represented as 05, otherwise erroneous results may be produced.
6. Optional boxes, initially set with a value of 0, are available so that you can put in Material, Machinery and other costs, for example apportioned administrative costs; However, if they are not filled in then this does not affect the planner.

Three Miscellaneous boxes have been included to allow for any specific requirements not covered in the rest of the table.

Once the [Calculate] button is pressed the planner will take a few seconds, depending upon the speed of your computer, to calculate all the required values in the boxes.